Ms Louise Loughlin:

I thank the Deputy for her questions. I will reply and bring in Ms Condon later. I will tell the committee a little more about our service. The National Advocacy Service for People with Disabilities is funded by the Citizens Information Board, which is funded by the Department of Social Protection. It has a particular remit to support people who are isolated in their communities, living in residential services and who communicate differently. Our service is only for adults so we do not provide support to children, although we see people when they age out of our education services and come into adult services. That is where we see the future impact of the issues and situations that Dr. Walsh and Ms Walsh have so eloquently highlighted.

On the Deputy's question about the types of issues that arise for us, they are very wide-ranging. Housing is a major one. When we describe housing we mean the broadest range in terms of accommodation. We are talking about people who might be living in residential services, an old-style institutional setting, who no longer want to be there. It can take a very long time to support people to transition out of that into independent living. It can also mean people, particularly on the autism spectrum, who can find themselves on the cusp of homelessness or homeless. That can be an issue, especially in Dublin.

One of our main areas of work is supporting people to build their own capacity in decision-making and to be involved in decisions. Ms Condon highlighted in one of her earlier remarks the fact that when many disabled people are given the opportunity to make decisions or exercise choice they find it extremely challenging due to the disempowerment they experience from quite a young age in terms of not being supported to live their lives to their full capacity. They require a lot of support to get to that point. Much of our work is on building people's confidence and autonomy to even voice their concerns about decisions that are being made for them and about them in respect of quite fundamental basic rights regarding where one lives and how one spends one's time.

The other area in which we are involved is access to justice. Some of the issues in respect of next-of-kin and ward of court are a particular theme of our work.

We have not done a projection per sewith regard to what has emerged from the capacity review in terms of the longer term growth in the number of disabled people. We currently have approximately 28 advocates around the country and eight senior advocates, with a very small management and support team for that. We have waiting lists, and they have been growing. We will be seeking an increase in resources to support us to fully deliver those services because it takes us a long time to support people to achieve the outcomes that they want to achieve.

We anticipate that when the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015 is commenced next year, there will be an increased demand for advocacy there, as people seek to implement the provisions of the Act in terms of their own decision-making. I might refer to Ms Condon to talk about next-of-kin, some of the case work, how long it can take and the complexity of it, some of the issues that Dr. Walsh and Ms Walsh have highlighted that we see on the adult side, how complex they can be and why advocacy is so critical.